The basic equation: Public Story = Policy Change

[For more on Story in the Public Square, a partnership of The Providence Journal and the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, visit the Story website. Registration is now open for the April 12 Story Day!]

At the heart of Story in the Public Square lies a basic equation:

Public Story = Policy Change

Which means: Storytelling can powerfully influence how people collectively think and act.
              We see this commonly in the broader public arena -- the story that moves a city council, a state assembly or the U.S. Congress to enact or revise a law, for example. But the equation applies to a more micro level, too: the story of a neighborhood break-in, for example, that prompts residents to organize a crime watch.  

A single story can have broad and singular impact. 

Two examples from fiction are Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which fueled the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement, and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which contributed to a wave of reform and regulation in early-1900s U.S.

From non-fiction comes the example of the three-day Washington Post series by writers Dana Priest and Anne Hull and photographer Michel duCille exposing deplorable conditions inside the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for outpatient Iraq War veterans. The story, published in February 2007, prompted the resignation of Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, led to improved treatment for veterans, and won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

One of Michel duCille's Pulitzer photos. Courtesy Washington Post.

                Many stories can also cumulatively influence policy, over time.  

The “Public Story = Policy Change” equation has no timeline. 

From Rhode Island comes the example of Providence Journal stories over many years that contributed to the closing of institutions for the mentally ill and the mentally challenged that had become notorious for their inhumane treatment. Read one of my Journal stories about the former Institute of Mental Health. And read two of my Journal stories about the former Ladd Center for the mentally disabled.

A story, of course, does not have to be just words. Images and sound -- as in song -- can also tell stories. Two pivotal stories in the national movement to close abusive institutions for the mentally ill and mentally challenged were the great documentarian Frederick Wiseman's film Titicut Follies and educator Burton Blatt and photographer Fred Kaplan's book Christmas in Purgatory.
               Some other equations apply to story. For example:
               Length alone does not determine the power of story.
               Books tend to be longer; newspaper and magazine pieces, blog postings, and fictional short stories tend to be shorter. A single picture worth the proverbial 1,000 words is also a "short" form that can have tremendous story power. Consider the iconic image of the Vietnam War, which in one single frame told the story of the horror of that war, and was one of the images that, combined with written stories and other still and moving images, turned Americans and American policy against that conflict:

Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Nick Ut

               Or consider film. Watch this one-minute, 48-second short film and see if how  the story it tells changed policy (of passersby).

Of course, not every public story aspires to prompt policy change! Many stories entertain, educate, inform, enrich and change perspectives and lives on an individual level, with no goal of influencing public policy. Since the days of prehistoric cave art (and probably much earlier), story has been an integral part of the human experience.

Magura Cave, Bulgaria

               For more on Story in the Public Square, a partnership of The Providence Journal and the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, visit the Story website.